Online cartoonist fights legal threat with money for bears

Online cartoonist fights legal threat with money for bears

Storified by CBC News Community · Tue, Jun 12 2012 10:26:02

When the people behind a comedy website threatened an online cartoonist with a lawsuit for accusing them of running a content-stealing website, the cartoonist responded using the best ammunition available to him.

Instant, brutal and sustained humiliation.

You might not know Matthew Inman or his comic The Oatmeal, but you might have seen one of his online comics. His humorous takes on technology, social media, food and cats have a tendency to go viral.

Because Oatmeal comics get passed around so much, sometimes they get posted to other sites without credit. One of those sites is FunnyJunk.com and Inman has accused it of taking his comics, removing the credit and web address and posting them online with advertising.

Now, Inman says he has received a letter threatening a lawsuit unless he removes the blog posts making those accusations.

FunnyJunk is threatening to file a federal lawsuit against me unless I pay $20,000 in damages http://is.gd/xyf7YUMatthew Inman

"I don't want to get tied up in courtroom nonsense. I don't want to pay more money to my lawyer," wrote Inman. So, he said, he'll deal with the complaint like this:

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Inman dubbed the campaign "Operation BearLove Good. Cancer Bad." He started a fundraising campaign on the website Indiegogo, a service similar to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, but while Kickstarter is specifically for creating products, Indiegogo supports charitable fundraising, too.

BearLove Good. Cancer Bad.I run a comedy website called The Oatmeal. Last year I wrote a blog post about another website called FunnyJunk which stole a bunch of my...

Thanks to Inman's fans sharing his blog post on sites like Reddit, the campaign went viral and starting raising money right away.

Now, Inman tends to be a little profane (OK, more than a little) in his comics and his Twitter posts. Thankfully, some helpful folks, like Sportsnet's Shannon Proudfoot, retweeted his posts with the naughty words censored.